And we are still not saved: critical race theory in education ten years later

Abstract

Abstract In 1995, Teachers College Record published an article by Gloria Ladson‐Billings and William Tate entitled ‘Toward a critical race theory of education’. In this article, the authors proposed that critical race theory (CRT), a framework developed by legal scholars, could be employed to examine the role of race and racism in education. Within a few years of the publication of the article by Ladson‐Billings and Tate, several scholars in education had begun to describe their work as reflecting a CRT framework. In this article, we review the literature on CRT in education that has been published over the past ten years. We also assess how far we have come with respect to CRT in education and suggest where we might go from here. Acknowledgements A portion of this article was presented at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association in San Diego, CA, USA. The authors would like to thank Gloria Ladson‐Billings and William F Tate, IV, for their comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. We would also like to thank David Gillborn and the reviewers for their thoughtful comments on this article. Notes For a review of the origins and development of CRT in legal studies, see Tate (Citation1997). One exception to this general observation is the involvement of CRT scholars in legal proceedings related to education. For example, both Solorzano and Ladson‐Billings have been called upon to serve as expert witnesses in cases that address educational inequity. Solorzano served as an expert witness in Gratz vs Bollinger (University of Michigan affirmative action case). Ladson‐Billings served as an expert witness in a case against a rural school district in South Carolina. In this way, CRT scholars in education have taken action in the struggle against racial inequity.